Healing Hands
by chocolatequeen
Summary: Rose ends up with a migraine as a result of one of her adventures with the Doctor. Can his hands and voice help her feel better?


Rose stumbled the last few steps toward the TARDIS. Inside, the cool, blueish green light of the TARDIS was a welcome relief, but the vibrating thrum of the console sent a bolt of searing pain through her head, and she barely managed to hold back a whimper. Chasing today's tyrannical dictator through a club had triggered her first migraine in years.

"Right then Rose," the Doctor said as he flipped a lever and sent them into the vortex. "Where to next?"

Rose shook her head and smiled wanly. "I'm sorta tired, Doctor," she said, trying not wince at the sound of her own voice. "S'pose we could maybe rest for a bit?"

His sharp blue eyes looked her up and down, and Rose put every ounce of energy she had into looking healthy. Apparently it worked, because he rolled his eyes teasingly and said, "Don't know how you humans manage with such rubbish physiology."

If Rose had been feeling better, she might have been tempted to stick her tongue out at him—not that she would, but sometimes the impulse was hard to resist. Today she just smiled gratefully and started down the corridor toward her room.

Each step she took jolted her aching head, and a wave of nausea swept over her. As soon as she was out of the Doctor's sight, Rose stepped and rested her forehead against the cool walls, drawing deep breaths in an attempt to avoid throwing up.

"Don't suppose you could move my room closer?" Rose said, more to herself than to the TARDIS. Her jaw dropped when a door appeared beside her; the Doctor said his ship was telepathic, but she'd never really believed him until now.

The ship's hum now sounded distinctly smug, and ill as she was, Rose still managed to roll her eyes. "Yeah, all right—you're…"

The grudging praise died on her lips when she realised the door opened onto the library, not her room. "Wrong landings must be something you have in comment," she muttered and turned to walk away.

But the stubborn ship tilted in the vortex, and suddenly Rose didn't care what room she was in as long as she could lay down. The cough in front of the fireplace was as good a place as any, and she shuffled across the room and collapsed onto it. Shivering and barely coherent, she tugged the afghan over her body and closed her eyes.

The Doctor watched Rose leave the control room with a concerned expression she completely missed. Her false bravado hadn't fooled him, and he berated himself for pushing her too hard. _She's just tired_, he told himself. _Nothing a few days won't fix._

But without a new destination driving him forward, the emptiness of his mind caught up to him. As long as he stayed busy, he could ignore the way his thoughts echoed in his head, now devoid of other Time Lords.

He shook his head resolutely and kneeled down on the grating. Repair work should keep his thoughts at bay, and in a ship over 1000 years old, there was always something to be done.

In tune with his ship as he was, he noticed her change in tone from indignant to concerned immediately. "What is it, Old Girl?" he asked, standing up and brushing his knees off. With a not-so-gentle telepathic nudge, she sent him down the corridor to a door he knew hadn't been there before.

Finding the library on the other side of the door wasn't a surprise—after 700 years, he'd grown accustomed to his ship occasionally moving things around. Finding Rose on the couch was a surprise however. "Rose? I thought you were going to bed."

She pulled the afghan up so it nearly covered her entire head, but it was the whimper of pain that sent fear knifing through him. "Rose? What's the matter?"

Her only response was to curl into a ball, and he was at her side in seconds. Rose's normally pink complexion was now chalk white, and her eyes were screwed up tight, putting a little furrow of pain in the middle of her forehead. The Doctor placed a hand there and let out a breath of relief when he didn't find a fever. "What's the matter?" he repeated, his Northern accent deep with concern.

She opened her eyes just a crack. "Migraine," she whispered, her voice hoarse. "Could never go clubbing. Jimmy'd make me go to his gigs and always hated how sick it made me."

Normally, mention of Rose's ex-boyfriend inspired violent fantasies in which he parked the TARDIS in London, 2003, and threatened to beat the tosser to within an inch of his life if he touched Rose again. But this time, her pain was his fault. He'd been just as bad as Jimmy Stones, and the thought made him sick.

Guilt made his voice gruff when he asked, "Why didn't you say something?"

Rose shrugged, her eyes closed again. "We couldn't let him go. He'd been running that slave operation on the side. Think of all the girls his men caught and sold."

The Doctor's face tightened into grim lines. Oh, he'd thought about it. That was why he hadn't let Rose out of his sight the entire time they'd been on the planet. Her blonde hair would have made her a prime target.

"I'll bring you some pain medication," he said abruptly, trying to ignore the thought of Rose being sold to slavers. She barely nodded in acknowledgement, and his concern ratcheted up a few notches.

He found what he needed in the infirmary and stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water. When he returned to the dimly lit library, Rose hadn't moved. "You'll need to sit up to take this," he said quietly.

"Hurts to move," she mumbled.

"Yeah, I know it does, but this'll help you feel better in a few hours."

One brown eye peeked out from under the afghan. "Promise?"

"Cross my hearts."

She sighed and tried to sit up, but flopped back onto the couch. "So dizzy."

Without a thought, the Doctor slipped his arm around her back and propped her up. He handed her the pill first, then the glass, and watched as she took it.

"D'you want me to turn the lamp off?" he asked after he set the glass down on the end table.

"Nah… s'ok," she murmured. "Some light doesn't hurt, not like sounds. Noise in the control room hurt."

_So that was why she'd beat such a hasty retreat after her return._ Suddenly he realised all his prattling was probably making her feel worse. "Right then, guess I'll go and let you rest."

She caught the sleeve of his jumper before he could walk away. "Stay, Doctor."

"Doesn't my talking make your head hurt?"

Rose shook her head slightly, and when he saw her grimace, he reached out automatically and started rubbing soft circles just above her temple.

She sighed softly and leaned into his touch. "Stay," she repeated. "Doesn't hurt when you talk. Maybe you could tell me a story… and keep doing that."

Staying with Rose while she was ill, massaging her headache away, it was an impossibly intimate, domestic idea. But the furrow of pain on her brow had eased a little, and he felt some pride in that. "Budge up then," he ordered, helping her sit up enough that he could sit on the couch, then gently positioning her aching head in his lap.

He carded his fingers through her bottle blonde hair, letting the strands float softly back into place. "What story would you like to hear?" he asked.

Rose shifted a little, so his long, elegant fingers would rub the right spot on her scalp to ease as much pain as possible. "Dunno," she replied. "But your voice makes me feel better. S'like, the rumbling Northern burr drowns out the higher pitched sounds that hurt my head."

"That makes sense," he said, and she could picture him tilting his head slightly as he considered. "The frequency of the sound waves…"

She opened her eyes and raised an eyebrow. "Doctor, I already have a headache. No science. Just… tell me an Earth story, something that'll be familiar."

There was a long pause, in which his fingers thankfully did not stop moving. She finally opened her eyes a crack to peer up at him. "Unless you don't know any?"

He snorted in indignation, as she'd known he would. "I know plenty of stories, me," he said. "Even have a few books memorised. I'm just trying to make sure I don't pick something from your future."

Rose rolled her eyes, then groaned at the pain that caused. "Fine then, Time Lord," she groused. "Tell me about your favourite planet instead—the most beautiful place you've ever seen."

His fingers stilled, and Rose suddenly felt the enormity of her request. She'd asked a man who'd lost his home to describe his favourite place.

He started talking before she could suggest a different topic. "The grass is red, and on the plains, it comes up to your knees. The trees are silver against a burnt orange sky, and everything just…" He blew out a hard breath. "When the wind comes down the mountains, the trees shake in the breeze, and it looks like a thousand pieces of crystal dancing in the light."

The quiet, reverent words and long, smooth strokes of his fingers eased Rose into an almost trancelike state. She swore for a moment that she could see it, just as he described, and she sighed, feeling a bit melancholy that she'd never see it in reality.

"Too much?" he asked, his fingers stilling for a moment.

"No," she whispered. "Don't stop there." She could feel some of the tension leaving his body as he talked, and knew it was good for him to share this even if they were both pretending he wasn't talking about his lost home. "Where's your favourite spot, Doctor?"

"In the mountains," he said immediately, his fingers moving again. "From the right spot, you can look down and see the red plains, with the Citadel rising above it in the distance. You can smell the wild arkytior—that's rose, by the way—and hear the trees rustling in the wind."

"Sounds beautiful," Rose whispered, tears hidden behind her closed eyes.

"Yeah, I suppose," he agreed reluctantly, stroking across her forehead and rubbing the aching spot along her eyebrows. "Not someplace to take a human though—that lot is pretty prejudiced."

"Then were would you take me?" Rose asked, giving him permission to change the subject.

His questing fingers found the tender spot right between her eyes, and she groaned. "Rose?"

"M'fine, just be careful there." He held still for a moment, and afraid of losing this moment of intimacy, Rose asked, "Doctor? Where do you want to take me next?"

His fingers started moving again, carefully avoiding the pressure point. "Think we should visit Woman Wept," he said, pressing into a knot at the base of her skull.

She nearly purred when he worked the tension out of her neck. "What's that?" she asked.

"A planet. The entire ocean frozen in an instant, in the middle of a storm. You can see the waves locked in a moment of time."

Comfort swept over Rose in deep, languorous waves as the Doctor's hands moved up from her neck back into her hair. "Why's it called Woman Wept?"

She felt her hair slipping between his fingers again. "'Cause from above, the one continent looks like a woman weeping."

Rose hummed, but didn't say anything. Between the pain pill, Doctor's soothing voice, and his magic fingers, the pounding in her head had diminished enough to allow sleep.

"Rose?" she heard him whisper as she drifted off, but she just smiled in reply.

The Doctor stayed a while longer, just to be sure he didn't wake her up when he moved. His hands stroked her hair without any order from his brain, and he knew this evening had carefully, quietly torn down some of the walls he'd kept between them.

How had she done it? How had she gotten him to think about Gallifrey, much less talk about it? He looked down at his precious girl asleep in his lap with some amazement and a little bit of fear. No one had penetrated his barriers in so long; did he even know how to have a close relationship anymore? But how could he keep her out when she kept the pain at bay?

Carefully as he could, he slipped out from underneath Rose, finding a throw pillow to support her head and pulling the afghan up around her. "Sleep well, Rose," he whispered and left the library.


End file.
